Review :: Paleoacoustics :: Sven Libaek

Sven Libaek
Inner Space
Trunk Records



I love the 1987 sci-fi-rom-coming-of-age classic film Innerspace, starring Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan. Especially the part when Martin Short makes out with Meg Ryan and the tiny Dennis Quaid jets himself in his little circulatory buggy from one open mouth to the next like some mechanical STD. To this day, when I make out with a girl I imagine tiny little spaceships are trafficking through our passion. Which means I've imagined it exactly one time.

Unfortunately, this post has nothing to do with that movie, but a record of the same name that I picked up a while back at Academy Records in Brooklyn. This was a pure impulse buy... the one that I casually place under my arm to make myself feel better about approaching a record clerk. Needless to say, I had no fucking clue who Sven Libaek was, nor the $20 to walk out with it. Fortunately, some Brooklyn record clerks have compassion, and he took my $15 and let me go. I've been thanking him ever since. Inner Space has become, without a doubt, one of the most-spun records in my collection. I want vibraphones on everything I hear. If the District replaced every brick in this city with perfectly-pitched wood blocks and forced every resident to attach mallets on the soles of their shoes, I would cease to look for cheaper rent in Baltimore.

Hats off to Trunk Records for providing thorough background info as well. This collection (subtitled The Lost Film Music of Sven Libaek) compiles music from four films (one drama, three documentaries) composed by Libaek during his time in Australia from 1965 to 1974. It's fitting that two of the documentaries are water-themed... the aforementioned vibraphone drips and ripples throughout, while wah-ed guitars bob along the current. I strongly recommend checking out the Trunk website, not only for their fixation on topless women, but also for the catalog, especially The Wicker Man soundtrack.

Sven Libaek :: Dark World